About

The leading event for seed-stage startups & investors

The Founder Showcase is the leading global event that helps seed-stage startups learn, launch, network, and be successful. The event, hosted by TheFunded.com, began in 2009 and takes place approximately twice per year. The Founder Showcase stage has hosted luminary speakers, such as Elon Musk (Founder of Tesla and SpaceX) and David Sacks (Founder of Yammer), and previous companies that have presented in the pitch competition have raised in excess of $150 million.

The Vision

The Most Innovative Start-Ups

While most other similar events feature companies raising their Series-A, we go one step earlier, as our presenters are all less than 2 years old and have raised less than $250,000 in funding. In other words, we give you the chance to see some of the most interesting companies of tomorrow before anyone else. The result? Over $150mm has been raised by Founder Showcase alumni thus far, including top companies like Thumbtack.com, RelayRides, Udemy, Breakthrough, VSee, Topicmarks, Kaggle, and many more. Check out the Founder Showcase Hall of Fame here.

An International Network in Silicon Valley

The Founder Showcase is one of the most international events you will attend in Silicon Valley, leveraging the Founder Institute’s global network that spans 85+ cities and 6 continents. There is no Silicon Valley echo-chamber here, just a collection of entrepreneurs from across the globe helping to launch new companies.

It’s a Learning Experience

The Founder Showcase exposes you to pitches from the most innovative new startups, and a Judging Panel of experienced CEOs and top-rated investors critique and grade each pitch – asking the key questions that any entrepreneur can expect to face.

We also get the highest rated CEO Mentors from the Founder Institute, an entrepreneur training program, to give informative and practical talks designed to help early-stage founders succeed. Previous speakers include Elon Musk of Tesla and SpaceX, Kevin Rose of Digg and Google Ventures, Aaron Levie of Box, Mark Suster of GRP Partners, Jason Calacanis of Mahalo, Aaron Patzer of Mint.com, Phil Libin of Evernote, Naval Ravikant of AngelList and VentureHacks, Hiten Shah of KISSmetrics, Munjal Shah of Like.com, Philip Kaplan of Adbrite and Blippy. See previous videos of the workshops here.

1/2-Price Tickets Available!

Hosted By:

A community of entrepreneurs to research, rate, and review sources of growth capital.
The world's largest entrepreneur training & startup launch program, with over 1100 Graduate companies across 6 continents.

Partners

Microsoft Ventures is a strategic partner for promising startups around the world focused on business growth & customer development, industrial strength technology and beautiful usable products.

The premier provider of legal services to technology, life sciences, and growth enterprises worldwide.
LivePlan, by Palo Alto Software, is a SaaS solution for pitch creation, business planning, and ongoing financial management for startups.
Worthworm is the leading startup valuation system that helps entrepreneurs to think like an investor, facilitate collaboration with investors and get funded faster.
Kapor Capital, the venture capital investment arm of the Kapor Center for Social Impact, invests in seed stage tech startups that generate both economic returns and positive social impact
FLOODGATE is a Palo Alto-based VC firm specializing in micro-cap investments in start-ups. FLOODGATE works with business innovators in high-impact markets.
AngelPad is a mentorship program founded by ex-Googler Thomas Korte to help web & mobile startups build better products, attract additional funding, and grow more successful businesses.

Idea-To-IPO is a community whose mission is to provide entrepreneurs with the knowledge, guidance, tools, and connections they need to succeed.